Racing – Day 2

Well….today was a day of mixed emotions. The boys got up early and were on the salt by 6:30, as many others are since you can start arriving at 6:00. They did what they needed to at the pit and hauled the car to the starting line which was around 9:00. We are running on what they call the “short course.” This consists of three miles under power and a two mile shut down. One other course is for rookies and the other is the “long course” which is five miles under power and a three mile shut down.

The wait was about three hours today to get to the starting line. They always have two lines ready for the same course and alternate them so there is always someone ready in the event a vehicle has issues on the line. As we were up, someone spun out on the course in front of us. This causes a delay, especially if they have to sweep the course for debris, and they did. We waited for about a half of an hour. Luckily Andy had purchased a cool shirt which is basically like wearing an air conditioned shirt. I assure you, he was much cooler than anyone else!

​​All that time and she went down the track for about 30 seconds. He said it just turned off as if you would have pulled a key out. So, back to the pits for a diagnosis. This is when you can’t decide if you should be worried or wait to see what they find out. I rolled with it. I still figure it’s better than something falling apart or burning up and with two engineers, I was confident they would figure it out. And after checking a bunch of stuff I won’t bore you with, they did.

Apparently a bolt that mounts the fuel pump came loose and allowed it to disengage from what turns it. This meant the fuel was instantly shut off from getting to the engine and explained why it suddenly turned off. It even made sense to me, no fuel = no go! At this point in the day, we knew there wasn’t enough time to get in line again. It was so hot that you really didn’t want to move anyway, at least I didn’t want to.

That was the part of the day that makes you sad since you’ve come this far and basically lost a run. But, on the other hand, we are good to go for tomorrow! The better part of the day came when we were asked to be part of a belly tank photo shoot for Roadkill magazine. Now, the tv version of this is an extreme favorite of the Welker boys so I believe it made up for the earlier part of the day. Roadkill is a YouTube show done by two guys that work for Hot Rod Magazine. They do various odd car challenges such as racing at the Salt Flats to driving cars from a junk yard across the country. They recently started their own magazine so I’m hoping this actually gets in it. They got a nice grouping of tanks together, something you just don’t see too much.

So, back in line tomorrow to see what happens and hopefully the issue has been resolved with this fix. The other good thing about today is that the honey bucket got emptied…right when Cora and I were eating lunch. Which leads me to today’s quote, “I feel like I’m chewing on poop!” And yes, momentarily, it really did.